The BBC this morning reports that to merge Powys council and its coterminous eponymous local health board have hit the buffers after a report found there were “major obstacles to overcome”.
Their consultants, KPMG have said that one of these obstacles is the Local Health Board’s £20m deficit and its different decision making processes. The objective is to look to integrate services as widely as possible so as to generate efficiency savings of between £6m and £14m.
This is of course still possible and both of these two obstacles can be overcome with some political will on the part of the Welsh Government. However, the biggest roadblock appears to be ideological, namely the Welsh Government’s determination to avoid redundancies.
Although it maybe possible to achieve savings over the long term through natural wastage the clear implication of this policy is that any savings have to be borne by the Council rather than the health board. That is not an equal partnership and even the Minister must see that this project cannot proceed on that basis.
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The LHB have a no redundency policy plus a huge defecit. It is hard to see a full merger getting the go ahead unless some assurances are given that the council do not gave to feel the full brunt of any decisions eg staff redundencies and taking on tbd LHB defecit. Other matters need to be taken into consideration such as decision making process. Seriously I wouldn’t want some of those cllrs taking a decision on the future of my health service! But there are ways the council and the LHB can work together such as sharing IT and secetarial staff, joint working on health and social care etc.